The web 2.0 tool that I reviewed was Wordle. I thought that it was a great tool with an endless amount of possibilities. The program was very easy to use and only takes a few steps to create. A Wordle takes the any group of words and places them in random order. It is a great way to have a fun and colorful organizer in your classroom. When the author gets to the Wordle website (www.wordle.net), she needs to click on the Create button. Since all of the Wordles get saved publicly online, there are no sign ups or passwords. The Create page gives the author three options to create a Wordle. The first option is the most frequent. The author can copy and paste or type words into the box. The second option is where the author can enter the URL of any blog or blog feed. The final option is to type in a del.icio.us user name (a social bookmarking website). When the author hits the submit button, the Wordle is created by putting the words in random order. The words that are repeated the most will appear bigger in the Wordle. The author can also choose to either include common English words or remove them from the Wordle. The author also gets to choose the font, color, and parts of the layout. Once the author is satisfied with the design, she can save it to the public library. The author just needs to create a public user name and a title for the Wordle. There were three things that made creating the Wordle difficult. The first thing is that the author cannot go back to the edit page after hitting the submit button. I suggest that if the author is typing out all of the words to also save them in a word document. This way if the author wants to change anything about the writing, she can do it in the document. Then she can easily copy and paste it back into the edit page without retyping everything. I also did not like that author can pick the order of the words. There is no way for the author to get a group of words to stick together or personally rearrange the words in any order. The only thing the author can do is keep hitting the re-layout button until it is in a pattern she likes. Finally, I did not like that you can only save the Wordle publicly online. Although it makes it easy to find, there cannot be any personal information in the Wordle. Even with these few problems, the pros outweigh the cons and I would recommend this program to all teachers. I created two different Wordles for this project. For the first one, I typed in the words of Jonathan London’s book Froggy Goes to School. The words that were the most frequent in the book were the biggest in the Wordle. I would like to use this in a 1st or 2nd grade classroom. It gives the students the main vocabulary words for the book. The teacher can go over the words with the class and the students can use the sheet to remember the words while they are reading the book. It is a great form of reinforcement for the students. The second Wordle that I created was more like a word wall. I took some common third grade sight words and put them into the edit page of the Wordle. Words that I wanted to make bigger, I repeated multiple times. I thought these would be fun for students at any age to create their own personal word walls. The student can take the words that they frequently misspell and words that are common in their writing and place them in their Wordles. The words that they use the most can be bigger. This would be a great for the students to place into their notebooks so it is on hand when they have any writing activities. These were only two ideas that I came up with. There are many other uses a teacher could find for Wordles and it would be a new and exciting dynamic to add into the classroom.
Wordle
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2655430/Froggy_Goes_to_School_By_Jonathan_London
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2655498/Sight_Words
The web 2.0 tool that I reviewed was Wordle. I thought that it was a great tool with an endless amount of possibilities. The program was very easy to use and only takes a few steps to create. A Wordle takes the any group of words and places them in random order. It is a great way to have a fun and colorful organizer in your classroom.
When the author gets to the Wordle website (www.wordle.net), she needs to click on the Create button. Since all of the Wordles get saved publicly online, there are no sign ups or passwords. The Create page gives the author three options to create a Wordle. The first option is the most frequent. The author can copy and paste or type words into the box. The second option is where the author can enter the URL of any blog or blog feed. The final option is to type in a del.icio.us user name (a social bookmarking website). When the author hits the submit button, the Wordle is created by putting the words in random order. The words that are repeated the most will appear bigger in the Wordle. The author can also choose to either include common English words or remove them from the Wordle. The author also gets to choose the font, color, and parts of the layout. Once the author is satisfied with the design, she can save it to the public library. The author just needs to create a public user name and a title for the Wordle.
There were three things that made creating the Wordle difficult. The first thing is that the author cannot go back to the edit page after hitting the submit button. I suggest that if the author is typing out all of the words to also save them in a word document. This way if the author wants to change anything about the writing, she can do it in the document. Then she can easily copy and paste it back into the edit page without retyping everything. I also did not like that author can pick the order of the words. There is no way for the author to get a group of words to stick together or personally rearrange the words in any order. The only thing the author can do is keep hitting the re-layout button until it is in a pattern she likes. Finally, I did not like that you can only save the Wordle publicly online. Although it makes it easy to find, there cannot be any personal information in the Wordle. Even with these few problems, the pros outweigh the cons and I would recommend this program to all teachers.
I created two different Wordles for this project. For the first one, I typed in the words of Jonathan London’s book Froggy Goes to School. The words that were the most frequent in the book were the biggest in the Wordle. I would like to use this in a 1st or 2nd grade classroom. It gives the students the main vocabulary words for the book. The teacher can go over the words with the class and the students can use the sheet to remember the words while they are reading the book. It is a great form of reinforcement for the students. The second Wordle that I created was more like a word wall. I took some common third grade sight words and put them into the edit page of the Wordle. Words that I wanted to make bigger, I repeated multiple times. I thought these would be fun for students at any age to create their own personal word walls. The student can take the words that they frequently misspell and words that are common in their writing and place them in their Wordles. The words that they use the most can be bigger. This would be a great for the students to place into their notebooks so it is on hand when they have any writing activities. These were only two ideas that I came up with. There are many other uses a teacher could find for Wordles and it would be a new and exciting dynamic to add into the classroom.
Cast Book
Why do Fall Leaves Change Color